Wrekmeister Harmonies

What’s in a name? In the case of Wrekmeister Harmonies, an awful lot. The musical project of composers JR Robinson and Esther Shaw, who often work with members of the experimental rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor, tips its hat to Werckmeister Harmonies, a celebrated 2000 art film by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Despite dabbling in different media, Robinson and Shaw’s recordings form something of a stylistic symbiosis with Tarr’s offbeat films: The spare, droning soundscapes on the most recent Wrekmeister album, 2016’s Light Falls, would pair perfectly with Tarr’s predilection for grainy black-and-white photography, sallow, haunted figures and long, long takes. Maybe they’ll all collaborate one day.